WoP - 01 - War of Powers

by Robert E. Vardeman

  Tarinvar the Steersman sat by the rail of the lugger Gallinule scrimshawing a piece of juggernaut fish ivory none too skillfully when he heard a frightful thrashing in the water.

  He raised his head. The carving fell from numbed fingers. Clambering up the far rail was a demon twice the size of a man and dripping with water and weeds. Tarinvar's eyes tried to pop from their sockets. The demon returned his stare with a red-rimmed scowl.

  'Grrr,' said the demon.Tarinvar leaped over the side, not waiting to hear more. The bosun emerged from the midship's cabin and came running aft. The first thing he saw was the inexpert idol of Somdag Squid-face which Tarinvar had left behind. The second thing he saw was the monster. Dark and malignant, it hunched near the stern, swiveling its misshapen head. Its gaze came to rest on the bosun.

  Heart threatening to explode from fear, the bosun leaped to the railing, then pressed the back of one of his hands to his lips, wagged his fingers in imitation of Papa Squid's squiggly visage to invoke the deity's protection, and dived overboard.

  'Monsters!' the cry came from the rigging above. A seaman dived past. He fell in the greasy water of Tolviroth Harbor with a prodigious splash, just as a second intruder clambered over the gunwales.

  Blinking saltwater from his eyes, Fost cleared his vision in time to see another dozen men in seamen's garb erupt from a hatch, dash to the railing, and jump overboard in a formation that would have done credit to a squad of Sky Guardsmen. Every one piously wiggled fingers in front of his face before diving. The cry, 'Demons' came floating up from the water like a seabird's call.

  Fost looked around in surprise. He had thought the skirmish in the tavern had sobered him up. A few feet away, Grutz pawed irritably at the seaweed wound around his head. Water had soaked his fur, matting the hair into flat, scaly wedges.

  Chubchuk hoisted himself up through a gap in the rail, a thoroughly sodden Jennas still clinging to his back. She shook limp auburn hair from her eyes.

  'Where is everybody?' she demanded. 'I may be insane,' Fost said, the eerie silence making him shiver, 'but I swear the crew jumped over the rail as I came aboard.'

  A splashing by the hull drew their attention. They leaned over the rail in time to see a flotilla of bobbing heads round the Gallinule's stern and strike out for the wharf a hundred yards away.

  'Demons’ they heard one call. 'Blessed Samdag deliver us from the dreadlings of the deep!'

  Fost and Jennas stood for a moment, looked at Grutz, then broke out laughing. A damp, seaweed-festooned bear emerging from the sea had to qualify as startling.

  'When you collect your feeble wits,' said Erimenes acidly, 'you might find out if there's someone aboard who knows how to steer this contraption. And you'd best be prompt about it. Your oaf of a former employer has just arrived at the wharf with his associates.'

  Fost glanced shoreward. A crowd gathered on the dock. A number were plainly onlookers, but among the mob Fost spotted a knot of Sky City soldiers.

  'You're right, Erimenes,' said Fost. 'Time to depart.' 'Before you rush off,' said Erimenes, 'would you please empty this damned water from my jug? I shipped a gallon of the foul stuff. It sloshes unmercifully. I just know I'll become seasick if you don't do something quickly.'

  Laughing, Fost emptied a brown stream from the jar. Then he turned away in search of anyone who remained of the Gallinule's crew.

  A breeze quested through tufts of dry, dead grass. Tiny hints of green could be glimpsed at the bases of the tufts where new shoots pushed up through the earth. Snow lay in clumps; more would fall before the season ended. But the hardy growth of the Sundered Realm began its annual struggle for supremacy quite soon after the days began to lengthen and grew imperceptibly warmer.

  Moriana walked along a bluff with the stiff grasses brushing her legs. The grass clutched at the skirt of her pale beige gown. She nodded absently to herself, marking the feel of the cloth swaying against her skin. After so long in tunic, boots, and breeches, it was strange to be clad in this fashion.

  A strap crossed one shoulder. From it hung the Athalar spirit jar, its lid open. Ziore hovered at Moriana's side like a benevolent pink cloud.

  The princess sat, gathering her cloak about her. From her vantage point, she saw the camp marching before her: orderly rows of tents, columns marching and countermarching in a fallow field, soldiers at practice with sword and spear, shooting arrows at targets, the cordoned kennels for the cavalry mounts, the bawling herd of one-horned ruminants penned beyond to serve as provender for men and mounts alike. Banners sprouted from flagpoles of tents like exotic blossoms. Paramount flew Moriana's own device, an eagle's claw clutching a scarlet flower against a field of pale blue.

  'I should be happy, Ziore, shouldn't I?' she asked, watching the banners dance in the wind.

  'You make it sound like a duty,' the spirit said. Moriana shrugged. She had picked a bare spot of earth to sit on. Her forefinger drew random shapes in the dirt.

  'Look, Ziore,' she said, sweeping her hand in a gesture encompassing the camp. 'Almost eight thousand men gathered at my feet. If Darl is right, we'll have ten thousand men by the time we march south. Ten thousand men, Ziore - the whole population of theCity is less than three times that. It's power, more than I ever thought I could muster against my sister.'

  Ziore poised, waiting. The wind sighed through the bottomland of the tributaries of the great River Marchant. The main flow ran north-east a quarter mile away; on the far bank lay the Empire. Eastward, Omizantrim squatted like a stone effigy. A thin spire of vapor rose from its maw and was lost in the high haze drifting overhead. Ominous as the mountain was, it had laid a blessing on this land. The vomitus cast up over eons from the entrails of the earth was rich in minerals. Crops grew lush to the very brink of the badlands kept desolate by lava and poison vapors from the volcano.

  Somewhere to the south floated the City in the Sky. In the weeks since Moriana and Darl had left Tolviroth Acerte, it had passed over Thailot where trade proceeded as if nothing untoward had come to pass. Wirix met the City's passage with sullen defiance - it was almost certainly the last the Sky City would assault. Brev and Thailot were easier targets, Kara-Est immeasurably more valuable. A few days before, the chance that guided the Floating City had turned it southward to pass over its new dominion of Bilsinx.

  Ziore's patience had a relentless quality to it that Moriana could never outmatch. She inhaled, held it, then let it out slowly.

  'I'm grateful to Darl,' she said. 'No one would-no one could-do for me what he's doing. And yet. . . yet it begins to feel wrong somehow. Events move past my control. And how can I complain? He's doing me a favor.'

  A many-throated shout caught her attention. She turned to see Darl riding in from the wooded hills on his tall war mount. He raised a hand. Instantly, a mob surrounded him. Idlers, officers, soldiers at their soldierly tasks, all gathered around crying out their devotion and their love. He raised a salute now, turning his head this way and that. Moriana knew he grinned that grin of his, a look she had come to know well in the last few weeks, a look she thought turned to love.

  Ziore laid a hand on her shoulder. She reached up to stroke it though she knew the warmth was no more than a comforting illusion produced by the spirit.

  'Such devotion,' the nun's ghost said. 'It borders on adoration. These men had never before laid eyes on Darl Rhadaman six weeks ago, and now they would lay their lives at the feet of his war dog.' Moriana looked up at her. She looked deep into the living woman's eyes.

  'I know little of this world, child, but it seems to me such loyalty is a potent force, as potent in its way as force of arms or numbers.'

  'Loyalty, aye,' she all but spat, her face hardening involuntarily into bitter planes. 'Loyalty to him.'

  'And this troubles you? You resent that their loyalty is given to him but not to you?'

  'No.' But she turned her eyes away.

  'It can be no other way.' Ziore smiled sadly. 'You admitted that your resources were inadequate to mu
ster support among the northerners. Not even among the people of the Quincunx could you raise an army. Thanks to Darl's persuasion the emissaries of Kara-Est and Wirix have promised to help provision your armies en route.' She touched Moriana's cheek. 'I know it is hard on you. But you cannot evade the knowledge that without him you'd be unable to challenge Synalon.'

  Moriana tried to hold in the tears that stung her eyes, tears of anger, of frustration, of the self-disgust that had grown to be an inextricable part of her soul in the weeks since that terrible day in the glacier when she'd had to murder the man she loved for the sake of her City. Her fingers groped blindly for the amulet hanging about her neck. She clung to it as if she could find strength in it.

  'There's more to it than that,' she said. 'That, too, cannot be changed,' Ziore said. 'This is the North. Customs differ here.'

  There was another reason Darl had become the focal point of the crusade against the City, and Moriana drew even farther from it. In the southern lands of the Sundered Realm, women and men existed in general parity. Armies frequently consisted of both sexes in the same proportion of the population. The second-in-command of the mercenary band Rann had hired as ground troops was a woman. Women had equal say in governments as well, from the chief deputy of Kara-Est to warrior-chieftainesses of the steppes like Jennas. In the Sky City women ruled by law and custom; though the rank and file of its military was male, Moriana had first been blooded while commanding troops in the war five years before with the Golden Barbarians who had invaded the savannah west of the Thails and terrorized the country between Deepwater and the Sjedd.

  In the northern half of the Realm it was different. Darl's triumphant procession reached the pavilion he shared with Moriana. He dismounted, handing the reins to a soldier eager to do his least bidding. Then, as was his custom, he turned and knelt, abasing himself before Moriana's banner.

  Moriana didn't need to turn back to Ziore to know what the spirit felt. The words ran through her mind: his loyalty is to you. She shook her head.

  Darl's loyalty was unquestioned. And he reaffirmed over and over that he followed Moriana's flag, turning the suspicion of the earth-bound toward her into a kind of reverence. Yet that very reverence passed through Darl, just as (according to pagan priests of the Far Archipelago) divine essence passed through them to the faithful.

  'I'm a figurehead,' Moriana said quietly. 'A symbol, a living emblem. Not a shaper, not a leader of all the forces gathered in my name.'

  That's unworthy of you, Ziore mentally rebuked her. Moriana's hands clenched the amulet as if to crush it. Yes, the thought was unworthy. She knew it and despised it. She loathed herself for the ingratitude that made her resent her greatest benefactor.

  But deep inside her mind festered a suspicion that more lay behind her concern than childish petulance, that the channel along which she felt her crusade being diverted might dash everything to ruin. The thought tingled and stung like a pulled muscle. She suppressed it. It was rationalization, nothing more.

  Within her hands, darkness slipped across the face of the Destiny Stone.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Tapers burned low, flickering in figured sconces. Gargoyle faces graven into the stone of the chamber by some long-dead, inhuman hand winked at Prince Rann from shadowed walls. He pored over his plans to meet the threat of Moriana's ragtag army.

  A knock on the chamber door broke his concentration. 'Her Majesty would speak with you, Highness,' a voice came tentatively. 'She awaits your pleasure in her chambers.'

  'I come,' said Rann, draining his goblet. He rose, paused to take a fur-trimmed cloak from the outstretched talon of a fiend on which it hung, and draped it around his shoulders. Synalon's latest fancy was to keep the windows of her throne room wide, day and night. Spring was still weeks distant.

  He followed the servant down the corridor to a steeply pitched flight of stairs. Two palace guards stood erect in their sculptured breastplates and greaves. They thumped their weapons' butts ceremoniously on the floor as Rann walked between them without acknowledging their presence.

  Clad in a filmy gown the color of her hair, Synalon lounged by an open window. The landscape spread before her, yellow and white, patched over with shadows of drifting clouds. Off in the east, past where the land fell away from the central massif and rolled gently to the sea, Kara-Est readied itself for war.

  'Greetings, cousin,' said Synalon without turning. The way she draped herself against the window's frame made her seem part of the design, a sinuous and erotic embellishment. The gossamer material of her gown clung to her limbs like lover's fingers.

  'What is your pleasure, Majesty?' asked Rann, bowing deeply. 'Are you ready to crush the upstarts challenging me in the name of that slut Moriana?' she demanded.

  'Quite, dear cousin. V'Duuyek will ride north with nine hundred of his men leaving the other three hundred to garrison Bilsinx in case the Estil try to be clever. We've five hundred of our own dog riders accompanying him and eleven hundred infantry. Additionally, we have a thousand Bilsinxt light-dog bowmen for scouting and skirmishing.' Synalon raised an eyebrow at this. Rann smiled with a touch of impudence. The thousand Bilsinxt mounted archers represented a victory for him.

  Rann did not possess the preternatural gift of oratory that animated Darl Rhadaman. Yet he was a skillful enough speaker and he knew well the ways and weaknesses of humankind. He had called the citizenry of Bilsinx before him in the Central Square the day after the assault. It wasn't subjugation the Sky City offered, he'd told them. Partnership, rather, in a glorious enterprise that would make the City the foremost power in the Sundered Realm. Mere aggrandizement at the expense of the Quincunx had not been the City's goal. Instead, the City's ruler, the bold and brilliant Queen Synalon, wished to streamline the inefficient process of trade among the Cities and the City and meld the Quincunx and the Sky into one powerful, smoothly functioning entity to stand against an envious world.

  He reminded Bilsinx of the 'merciful' character of the conquest. There had been no fires, no looting, no widespread slaughter or property destruction. The only ones who had been harmed were those offering resistance. He had told the populace he regretted even those deaths. The shedding of Bilsinxt blood, the martyrdom of so many brave soldiers fighting nobly - if misguidedly - in defense of their homes, would not have been necessary but for the obstinate unreason of Irb and his sycophants. The wicked mayor had been punished; Bilsinx and the Sky City were now one. It remained only to put hard feelings behind and forge a bond of eternal friendship between two great peoples.

  A wave of restrained approval met his words. Irb had not been popular among his subjects. But the Bilsinxt had heard tales of dark and bloody retribution meted out by Synalon and Rann. This avowal of friendship and the chance to share in the Sky City's greatness were unexpected. The cheers had been sporadic at first, then turned into a wave of acclamation.

  The Sky City need have no fear of rebellion in Bilsinx.'We can't spare many flyers,' Rann went on. 'I believe that a squadron of two hundred fifty common bird riders will suffice. Moriana notwithstanding, the Northerners have no experience fighting bird riders.' Synalon turned. One leg was cocked, the foot resting insouciantly on the windowsill. The other dangled downward to the floor. She nodded slowly.

  'And who commands? Not Count Ultur, surely?' 'I will, Majesty.' Rann frowned.

  'Really?' said Synalon, feigning surprise. 'You intend to desert the City at the crucial moment of our preparations to conquer Kara-Est? You disappoint me, cousin.'

  He could scarcely believe what Synalon was saying. He had to lead the expedition against Moriana. Their best intelligence-and it was good - indicated that her army outnumbered the City's forces two to one. In spite of this, Rann felt confident of success. Had he not led the combined armies of the City, Thailot, Deepwater, and the other cities of the west, outnumbered and disorganized as they were, to victory over the nerveless slave-warriors of the Golden Barbarians?

  'Majesty,' he said, voice rasping wit
h sudden dryness. 'Surely you don't expect me to stay!'

  'Oh, but I do.' Her voice was like the caress of a silken whip, soft and yet deeply cutting. 'You are needed here, cousin mine. At such a juncture I cannot chance the loss of your cogent brain.' She allowed her lips a subtle curl.